Making a three-point play.

Harlem Globetrotters Chairman Mannie Jackson brings strong management experience to running the famed basketball team

Stereotyping is gauche but in this case there is no way around it: Mannie Jackson is an African-American who loves basketball, a point that he says in many ways has greatly influenced his life.

Talk to Jackson for any length of time and two subjects will dominate the conversation: Being an African-American of his generation in America (he's 55), and basketball.

Basketball didn't make Jackson rich but it has propelled him into a position to run one of the world's most recognizable names in sports - the Harlem Globetrotters. He is the principal owner, chairman and president of the Globetrotters, the basketball team that has been touring the world for almost 70 years entertaining millions of people with its on-court antics.

A former collegiate, professional and Globetrotters' player, Jackson made his way - and money - in the corporate world as an executive with Honeywell Inc. the giant industrial controls systems company. Two years ago, when the Harlem Globetrotters' parent company went into bankruptcy, Jackson formed an investment gronp and bought the Alhambra-based team for $6 million.

After a few stumbles, Jackson boasts that he has turned the team around by updating the "product" and more aggressive marketing. He says the job is far from finished, though, and he is constantly thinking of ways to market the team to compete with all the entertainment options of the 1990s.

This year, Harlem Globetrotters International Inc. expects to have an operating profit of $700,000 compared to a loss of $100,000 last year. Gross revenues are expected to be between $25 million and $30 million this year.

"Because this is the probably the best-known name in sports anywhere in the world," says Jackson, "the groundwork is there. What has to be done is it has to be sold. When I came in, there were a lot of problems. It wasn't being marketed.

"Fans know past stars of the team (like Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal) but the new team wasn't being sold to a new generation of fans."

Jackson says the core business of the team - basketball antics - will remain the same and its primary audience will always be families. But he adds that he has big plans for the team to bring it into the 21st century.

Some of those marketing ideas are a movie about the Globetrotters, more merchandising, a web site on the Internet, a CD-ROM about the team, games against a group of former National Basketball Association stars and sponsorship agreements with major corporations.

Though he is well past his playing days, Jackson looks like he could still get up and down the basketball court pretty good. At a trim 6-2. Jackson looks like he's about 40 rather than in his mid-50s.

He talks and moves like an athlete - low key and smooth. He is not without an ego.

"It's been quite an experience being alive during this time. So much has happened, not only in terms of technology but from a cultural point of view. Black people of my generation have seen a lot of changes. But by that I don't mean there are no more problems. There are - a lot more."

Jackson, who recently was named by Black Enterprise magazine as one of the top African-American professionals in the sports business, says he is currently working on an autobiography tentatively called "From Box Cars to Corporate Board Rooms."

The box cars part of the title comes from the fact that Jackson says he was born in a railroad boxcar in a small town, Illmo. Mo. He says he lived in the box car for the first 18 months of his life, along with 12 other members of his extended family that included grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Jackson has one sister and one step-brother.

After the box car, the family moved to a house in Edwardsville, Ill., another small town. The town was segregated and it was the 1940s. Both his parents worked as domestics.

"We lived across the street from the white school and we would see all the white kids going to a nice school. We went to a four-room school for first to 12th grade. It was old. We didn't have anything in our school but the white kids' school had everything."

When he was about 8, Jackson discovered basketball and not too much later figured the sport was a way to a better life.

Jackson won a scholarship to the University of lllinois and was one of the first two blacks to play on the varsity basketball team. In his senior year, Jackson was elected captain of the team.

"As a black, I had to be very careful back then. The civil rights movement was starting up. I had to watch myself. I couldn't do anything wrong. ... For a good part of my life, I've had to live defensively."

As a highly visible collegiate athlete, Jackson met people like Dr. Martin Luther King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, with whom he still maintains a relationship.

After college, Jackson played in three professional leagues, including a stint with the Globetrotters, but he also began preparing for a life after sports.

Through his basketball, Jackson got a job in Detroit working in the management training prograin for General Motors Corp. in the late 1960s.

Jackson was in Detroit during the 1968 riots there. "It was a terrible situation. When they happened, I saw the true colors of many of my white colleagues."

Jackson then went to Honeywell, where he climbed the corporate ladder until last December, when he left the Minneapolis-based company as senior vice president.

During his last few years at Honeywell, Jackson was in charge of acquisitions buying smaller companies. It was while at Honeywell that Jackson accumulated enough wealth to buy homes in Minneapolis and Scottsdale, Ariz., and four cars. Jackson, who is married with two children, is now looking to buy a condominium in the Los Angeles area.

Jackson says he is committed to helping the African-American community through ownership of the Globetrotters. Those activities include a planned team tour of South Africa and community involvement by the players.

Jackson says he enjoys his life immensely. "lt's wonderful," he says.

But he also notes that money has made a difference.

"I go into a hotel, open my wallet with my credit cards and money and I am treated very well It would be different if I didn't have that."

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Mannie Jackson

Native of: Illmo, Mo.

Resident of: Minneapolis, Minn.

Age: 55

Education: B.S. in business, University of Illinois; M.B.A., University of Detroit

Spouse: Catherine Jackson